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Hexagram 30 · Lí

The Clinging Fire

離 · lí
Clarity and brightness; cling to what illuminates.
Lí · Fire
above
Lí · Fire
below

Core Meaning

The Judgment: The Clinging, Fire: steadfastness rewards and brings success. Tending the cow — quiet, docile receptivity — brings good fortune.
The Image: Brightness rises twice: the sun's repeated dawning. So the great person carries the light onward and illumines the four quarters of the world.

Fire doubled, brightness rising twice: Lí is the clinging — light's dependence on what it burns, radiance conditioned on care of the fuel. Everything that shines clings to something.

Its counsel is the docility of the cow: brilliance sustained by humble tending. Clarity, like flame, needs feeding and steadiness; it flares and dies when it forgets its dependence. Cling consciously to what illuminates you, and burn with the yellow, balanced light of midday rather than the blaze that consumes itself.

The Clinging Fire in Your Question

Love & Relationships

Lí sees love as flame and fuel: radiant, warm, and dependent — on attention, on care, on what each of you feeds it. Its counsel is steady tending over dramatic blaze; the fourth line's fire that flares up suddenly is thrown away as fast. Even its tears line is hopeful: sorrow fully felt at the turning point clears the light.

Career & Money

Professionally, Lí concerns clarity and what it depends on: your best thinking clings to sleep, structure, and the right collaborations — tend the fuel, not just the flame. It favors work of illumination — analysis, teaching, design — done with midday's yellow balance. In correction, its final counsel: strike the ringleaders of a problem, spare the followers.

Personal Growth

Inwardly, Lí asks what you cling to, since clinging is not optional — only its objects are chosen. Attach to what genuinely illuminates: practices, people, and truths that make you clearer. Its emotional honesty is rare — neither drumming false cheer nor lamenting age, but burning steadily at the brightness your fuel honestly supports.

The Six Lines

A line speaks only when it is a changing line in your own casting.

Line 1
Footprints cross in every direction at daybreak. Amid the rush of beginnings, seriousness keeps one free of blame.
Line 2
Yellow light: the glow of midday measure and balance. Supreme good fortune.
Line 3
In the light of the setting sun, people either drum on pots and sing, or loudly lament their age. Both miss the moment. Misfortune.
Line 4
It comes blazing up suddenly — flares, dies, and is cast aside. Brilliance that consumes itself.
Line 5
Tears in floods, sighing and sorrow — the chastened heart at the turning point. Good fortune.
Line 6
The discipline strikes only at the ringleaders, not the followers. Correct the root, spare the rest. No blame.

Related Hexagrams

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